Lean and Continuous Improvement in Higher Education

Written by: Maudie Holm, PhD and Theresa Waterbury, PhD

There is nothing more “fun” for scholar-practitioners than to get to implement programs that breathe life into the theories they study. Certainly, to be able to examine Educational Lean and its effects on higher education is a dream come true for those intrepid enough to take it on. We would like to think of ourselves as such pioneers, even though Educational Lean’s lineage consists of process improvement movements from the 1980s and 1990s such as TQM, reengineering, and Six Sigma. The purpose of this brief article, then, is to outline what Lean is and give some practical examples of its use in higher education by introducing an implementation model.

The full article is only available to online subscribers of Academic Leader